


Intangible

by spaceleviathan



Series: Family of Frost [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Norse Myths & Legends, Parental bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Throughout the centuries, Jack Frost always came across the same man. He wondered who he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intangible

When Jack woke up, it was to darkness. He felt light as air, floating, drifting, scared. He didn't know who he was, where he was, or how to get away. It was cold, it was endless, and it was so very dark.

And then there had been the moon: a beacon of light and hope and wonder, and Jack hadn't been afraid anymore.

And then there was the frost, biting at his toes and controlled by his touch. He delighted in the swirls and twists; the beautiful patterns he could make with the ice and the chill upon his stunning surroundings.

He ran, carefree and delighted, and when the wind picked up he flew, startled at first, but soon all too trusting, allowing the breeze to sweep him away with the snow.

And then there was the town, Burgess, which rested not far from where he awoke. He watched it as he perched in a tree and he observed the fires and the restless community, and he wanted to be a part of it.

There were chatters between the inhabitants as they huddled around the fire and they seemed to notice the sudden drop in temperature when Jack Frost landed. He, however, did not. He noticed, instead, that they could not see him.

He stopped trying after several minutes to grab their attention, during which he had yelled and waved and unleashed his frustrations though his new-found powers, making the townsfolk colder and more solemn than their already miserable faces proved them to be. Jack ceased his onslaught then, realising he was only making a sad day that much worse.

Something had happened here in this town, and the low murmurs shared in the public domain were not ones which were usual for the people. Jack tried to ask hopelessly what had happened, but no one heard him.

Sorrowful eyes were being pointed towards a house on the edge of the small town, and Jack followed the direction of their gazes, approaching the wooden building and peering invisibly into a window. The three inhabitants were huddled close in the central room, one little girl sobbing helplessly with another woman trying to ease the child's pain. Jack saw the grief writ about the woman's own features, and also the stony mask of the dark-haired male who had his arms wrapped around his wife. Then Jack realised they were in mourning.

He noticed his handprint had left a delicate pattern of frost across the glass window and along the wood. It had creaked open under the pressure of the cold. A frosty draught fluttered in through the gap, and the male looked up from his weeping family, suspicious.

Jack saw something strange in those eyes, ivy-green and sharp, and for a moment Jack wondered if he had been spotted. His breath caught, and despite the sympathy for whatever plight this family was facing, hope overcame his heart. The man stood, quickly approaching, and Jack started to smile.

The creature before him, this human, was a strange specimen of his kind. He didn't look like he belonged here in this little town: there was something regal about him, something other-worldly. Most importantly, there was something breathtakingly familiar. Jack felt like he knew this bizarre man with his inky black hair and his snow-white skin, and even something as ridiculous as the size of his hands seemed recognisable as he reached up towards the window frame to the pictures Jack Frost had left behind.

For a long moment Jack stared this man straight into his eyes, and the man stared back, a gouge to his forehead caused by confusion and curiosity which had his eyebrows bent together.

"Hello!" Jack breathed, almost scared to believe it, and a whisper of ice came out with his words. The green-eyed man watched it avidly, before looking up at Jack again. He reached out towards him, and Jack returned the gesture, staring at the familiar digits, knowing precisely which touch the man was seeking.

Jack felt such happiness and such awe to be seen, and the man seemed to return the sentiment, as his pained expression had shifted into longing and overwhelming relief. Relief for what, Jack didn't know, but if he was the cause of it he was happy to see the human's suffering lifted.

And then their fingers touched.

And then their fingers passed through.

The man froze, his face dropping and his hand suspended in thin air. Jack looked at him wildly, chasing his eyes and trying to grab on to that hand, but failing to make contact and realising that the man had never seen him at all, but had seen through him.

The expression spreading along the man's face was unlike anything Jack had seen before. Jack had not been subject to much since he'd awoken, but he'd already observed his fair share of the sadness of humanity since he'd arrived in this little town, and he knew of the depth of heartache they could portray across their faces; enough, even, to break another man's heart.

The little girl being comforted by her equally anguished mother was enough for Jack to want to tear himself away else he himself may start to cry, but here, now, being the subject of one man's hopes and then the reason for his misery, was simply too much.

The dark-haired human stared straight ahead, unseeing, disbelieving, and Jack was trying to get his attention, screaming for it, crying for it.

"Look at me!" He pleaded, helplessly attempting to make this man aware of his presence. "Please! I'm _right here_ , look at me!"

A blankness had overtaken the joy which had so briefly softened the man's severe features, followed by a resigned sadness, as if he should have expected this in the first place.

He shook his head after a long moment, and Jack stopped his desperate pleading to watch helplessly as the man glanced up once, but saw nothing and shut the window in his face.

Jack felt the betrayed tears in his eyes, and though he couldn't explain why he felt the way he did, he furiously fled the scene, the house and the little town, his misplaced fury blasting the window open once more with his icy powers as the wind carried him far, far away.

\--

It was many years later, perhaps fifty, perhaps sixty, perhaps more, before he returned to Burgess. The town had changed in his absence, and he was hardly surprised.

Whilst he'd been gone from this particular village, he certainly hadn't been inactive in other places of the world. He'd watched as humanity progressed, making startling leaps in technology and engineering, and he'd stood back and stared as little towns much like Burgess had been developed into sprawling cities and the centres of human civilisation. The humans themselves were ever expanding, evolving and developing, and Jack had found his pleasure not in being seen (as he'd come to the realisation that he'd likely never be seen by the humans), but in messing with adults and having fun with the youngsters.

At first he had hated his gift of snow and cold and the way it alienated him from the people who shied away from both, but he'd quickly come to remember the joy he'd experienced back when he'd first awoken, and that joy was echoed in the human children.

The adults found Jack Frost a chore when he came knocking on their doors, as he interrupted their busy lives by being unscheduled and intrusive. Sometimes he could completely stop the day from progressing by layering the ground with several feet of snow, or blocking people in or out of their own houses. The children, however, delighted in the games they could play, the snowballs they could throw, the sturdy ice they could skate upon. Jack always made sure it was extra thick, as children were delicate. He knew that there was no such thing as too much safety when skating upon a frozen river.

Then, occasionally, the adults would look upon their offspring and remember what it was like to be children, and those were the times Jack treasured the most; when the parents joined in the play with their young and everyone laughed and fun was had all around.

It didn't happen often, but when it did Jack immersed himself completely within it,  because accepting his invisibility to humans didn't mean he had stopped being lonely. There, surrounded by everyone being happy over what _he_ had done, made him believe for a while that he wasn't alone.

It was during one of those rare days when he had gathered an entire town together out to the frozen river outlining the settlement, when people sledged and built snowmen and made snow angels and largely made a fool out of themselves (one or two guided a little by a touch of Jack's magic), that he looked up and realised he'd left one human out of the equation.

He hadn't meant to leave her out, and upon his discovery Jack grabbed his staff and caught the wind, settling into a cat-like perch atop the hook. He looked down at the elderly woman caught frozen and amazed by the sight stretching on before her. She stood on the top of the embankment, watching her fellow townsmen spend a day acting purely ridiculous. She was smiling softly.

"Why don't you join in?" Jack asked, knowing he wouldn't be heard, and as predicted the woman did not react to his voice.

"Go on," Jack insisted pointlessly, ready to push a little of his magical influence upon the lady if she didn't act on her own. "They'll be happy to have you." And they would. Jack had no doubt that everyone below would accept absolutely anyone into their games upon this glorious, impromptu winter festivity.

The woman certainly appeared as if she yearned to go, but something appeared to be holding her back. Jack's eyebrows creased, head tilting, curious about what it was which stopped the human from having a little fun.

And then a facial expression crossed over the woman's face, and across it ran such longing and bereavement that Jack almost recoiled. He'd seen that look before a long time ago; that same sad, fraught face that made Jack want to sob. It meant that this woman had lost someone dear to her; so much so that now she could hardly bare to behold the wonders of the day, when they were naught but reminders of what had once caused her such great pleasure. A husband, perhaps, but more likely a lost child.

Jack backed away, travelling with his wind, apologising quietly to the woman for her loss but unable to linger when he'd seen that same pain before - her's was an exact copy of the expression which had led him to run away once upon a time. Jack trusted the humans to take full command of their precious, miraculous day, as he fled to the skies and turned his back to the barrage emotions warring inside of him.

He didn't realise the wind had returned him to Burgess until he landed, and even then he didn't recognise it until he saw the sign.

 _Welcome!_ It read, but Jack had never felt welcome anywhere in his already-too-many, lonely decades.

"Why am I here?" He asked but, just like the moon, the wind was not in the habit of replying.

Jack found his feet trailing blindly towards the last path he'd followed through Burgess. He went to the centre of the little settlement, where the communal fire-pits had been turned into a town square. With his presence he brought the soft touch of frost which had people huddling closer together or further into their coats. Children followed the trail of the ice with high pitch giggles, and on another occasion Jack would appease them and play. He couldn't find the energy for it, not here and not now, when he had felt so drained by the sadness upon the elderly woman's face which reminded him so easily of another.

He found himself at the site of what had once been a modest wooden cabin, which was now two storeys and beautifully built to accommodate as large a gathering of people as Jack could imagine. The family of three which once lived here was no more, and likely their graves would be in the churchyard not far off from here.

Jack didn't know what he expected to find here in this place, whether it be closure or pain, but in the end he left with nothing but the wish that the memory of those aghast emerald eyes would leave him be.

\--

It was 1814 and Jack was in England. London, to be precise. He had quite happily decided that the Londoners were all far to miserable, and what they needed was some of Jack Frost's mischievous ways to brighten the winter months. What he decided to do to ease their desolate lives was freeze the river Thames.

It was harder than it looked, keeping the river as solidly frozen as it was and for so long, but he was ecstatic when his work paid off and the newest Frost Fair opened for a few days. They even had an elephant! Jack hadn't known what to think and had celebrated all out, prentending it was a day solely dedicated to him, spreading the joy and the snow and the frost like no other year.

It was during the fourth day, as he lingered from stall to stall and entertained the children, that he spotted a man he knew could simply not be there.

That same face had carved itself into Jack's psyche from the moment it had given Jack hope that even one person had seen him. Then there was the pain and the disappointment which had tainted that countenance with such abject misery that it still hurt Jack if he lingered on the memory too long.

He couldn't help recall the image now, as he watched an impeccably dressed Englishman stalk to and fro though the market, alone and sombre, not seeming to be looking for anything specifically in the stalls.

He didn't ignore the sellers when they called to him, and he observed each tent with great intrigue and politeness. He even bought a few things, just once or twice, and Jack knew because Jack had started to follow him.

He couldn't be alive. It had been over a hundred years, Jack knew that. Rarely did humans live that long, and even if he had, this man would be ancient. He certainly would not look like he hadn't even aged a day between him living in Burgess and living here in London.

He definitely sounded like an Englishman, Jack noted, as his accent was perfectly in line with the other members of the upper crust lingering around and enjoying themselves. What had he been doing slumming it like a peasant in the colonies, when he so obviously belonged here, clad in silks and jewels and breezing through the crowds with that same ethereal glow about him which set him so sharply apart?

Jack would have assumed that this was simply a relative of the original settler, an offspring who had found his fortune and returned to where his fortune was best displayed, if not for the eyes. No one else on the planet had eyes like him; not one other being in all the humans that Jack had encountered. Jack had been all across the globe thousands of times, but nothing compared to the vivid irises that man possessed. And, just like before, he seemed so familiar to Jack. So wretchedly familiar.

"Who are you?" He asked, hovering close to him and wishing not for the hundredth time that he was not unseen by everyone. " _What_ are you?"

Jack tried as he had before to touch him, but to no avail.

He sighed, pleasure in his Frost Fair forgotten as he failed again to physically connect to the world of humans. 

He left the frozen river behind, along with it the man he'd once again run away from, and missed the way the gentleman looked up sharply towards the cold patch of air hovering beside him in which Jack had so recently inhabited.

\--

It was 1865 and Jack was doing his rounds, messing up the day of grumpy adults and making them snow days for the unfortunate kids who were either trapped in school, or trapped in the workplace. Jack sometimes wasn't sure which was worse.

He had long since managed to draw a few kids into a snowball fight. These were kids who were usually half-way through their workday by now in dangerous factories, doing dangerous jobs. Jack was glad to give them a legitimate reason to be away from it all for a while: that reason being he'd made it so cold the machinery had broken. Nothing anything even the cleverest men could think to do had managed to unfreeze those gears once Jack Frost had set his staff to it. Jack was checking every hour to make sure his little tricks were still holding. The grown-ups were baffled, but the children were thankful.

Jack would happily do this every day if he wasn't aware the money earned from these jobs kept families afloat. He was able to spare them one or two days, but that was all he could feasibly manage. He wasn't capable of giving them the money they needed to survive, but he _could_ lift their spirits and keep them as happy as possible through his snow days and playtimes, and if he could save them the manual labour once or twice a year then nothing would stop him from doing it.

He'd been in the middle of a sledging race - complete with make-shift but surprisingly ingenious sledges - when Jack saw _him_.

The working children had merged, strangely and wonderfully, with the other youngsters from the schools (they had been given the day off when Jack had blocked up the entrances). The new-comers had gleefully joined in, no matter the difference in class.

Jack had been in the middle of observing the two leaders (one, a boy from the public school with spectacles, and the other a girl who considered herself lucky to only have two fingers missing from accidents on the machine she worked under in the factory) as they approached the finish line: Jack had set up a steep slope which would send them both whizzing through the air, just to land in a strategically positioned pile of soft, fresh snow. Jack had been so excited to see who would win, but something else had caught his eye. Something more startling, and much more important.

He floated to a window where a man was watching the commotion below, and Jack's breath caught.

He reached out, as he was seemingly wont to do around this strange, lingering creature (for surely this man was not human), and touched the sharp cheekbones of the thin, pale face. His hair was slick back as it had been in 1814, presenting a cool and composed individual, much unlike the lank tresses of the miserable man from 1710.

The man started at the sudden cold, making Jack flinch back, but those poison eyes caught on to the area of window sill Jack perched atop, gaze even accurately caught in the vicinity of the winter spirit's face. Jack was once again hit with the hope that maybe this human could see him.

It was a hypothesis quickly dismissed as the creature glanced around the entire window frame, but his eyes did return to Jack, possibly noting where precisely the temperature had dropped the lowest. Jack was always cold, and only ever got colder, so his immediate surroundings followed suit. This man seemed to recognise the strangeness before him as something to be avidly aware of, no matter how invisible Jack was.

And then the creature did the same thing he had done on the night Jack awoke in Burgess, and the only other time anyone had ever done something of the sort towards the winter spirit: he reached out to _touch him back_.

Of course the thin hand felt as if it brushed nothing but a chill in the air, but Jack himself knew differently. There was now a hand on his cheek, and though even he himself could hardly feel it, it hovered where it was and Jack took the liberty of touching the hand back, wishing he could press it closer to him. The warmth from the man's palm burnt through Jack, warming him through to his very core.

"Frosti?" The man breathed, and Jack snapped to attention. His consciousness had drifted away with this gentle moment, wishing it to last forever. An utterance such as that, however, could not be ignored.

"Yes!" He exclaimed, trying to grip the hand tighter, which shook and remained in the exact same place Jack had rested against for several minutes. "Frost! I'm Jack Frost!"

"Jökul?" The man then said, and Jack nodded eagerly.

"Jack! You said my name, in a way! I'm Jack!"

But the hand dropped away, and Jack's smile slipped. The man turned his back, fleeing into his home and away from Jack's influence. Jack followed him inside, accidentally freezing the wooden floorboards as he placed his bare toes upon them, painting delicate lines across the window. The man saw this and looked away to another pane of glass across the room which showed the joy being had by the children outside in the snow.

"Leave me, Jökul Frosti," he suddenly scowled, green eyes but a pair of thin slits as he watched the games. "Haven't you already stolen enough from me? Take your pretty drawings elsewhere and let me be."

Jack, breathless at being recognised but heartbroken at being denied, hesitated where he stood. The man whirled to face him as the seconds ticked by, and something ominous and green shot narrowly by Jack's ear.

"Let me be, Frosti, else face my wrath!" And there was nothing human about the creature then in that moment, and Jack took a moment to marvel that he'd ever believed such a deadly being to be simply mortal.

He fled out the open window, making sure to snap it shut behind him, and took the wind back down to the children. He looked behind him to the habitat where the non-human man was still watching, hidden in the shadows, his blazing eyes trained very solidly on the spirit he could not see but knew was there.

\--

Jack didn't mean to meet that man again, taking his warning more than seriously, but he was a creature who was always there long after every child had grown up and lived their lives and gone, and he was that one being appeared sporadically throughout the centuries, reliably present throughout Jack's elongated life.

"Who is he?" Jack would ask both the wind and the moon, but neither deigned to answer.

He stayed far out of the man's way if he ever bumped into him, but they weren't occurrences which happened often. It seemed to Jack that it was likely the man was not always on the Earth. Jack knew the planet pretty well, and even knew a lot of the inhabitants. It was unavoidable when you were an immortal spirit: you got to know the people you lived for.

Where the man went when he wasn't on Earth was a mystery to Jack, as everything else about the man was, but he didn't press it; he let it be, as the man had wanted.

And then he'd find him again just when Jack had started to forget he'd ever existed.

The man always knew Jack was there, but Jack no longer approached him. He wanted to, and he wanted to try every time to communicate, but he no longer dared. He wasn't sure how, but he knew precisely just how powerful the creature was. He wasn't about to risk his neck over some unexplainable urge to attempt the impossible.

"What did I take from him?" He asked the moon, no longer even expecting a reply. "Why does the one person who knows I exist hate me?"

He found his answer in Burgess, which he had made a home of in recent times. Something about the place was comforting to him, even if it was laced with the memories of those terrible eyes, but he'd ignored that, if only because never expected to see the man again here - not after what he'd lost here and the suffering he'd endured.

Jack had certainly not expected to see the man by the lake the spirit had woken under, silently watching the still ice, shoulders slump and defeated.

"Why are you here?" Jack asked him, and even though the man didn't hear him he quickly knew Jack was close.

"Why him?" He asked Jack, and the white-haired boy perked up. The man wasn't quite looking in the right direction, but Jack took a few steps to the left to correct that. He saw that he left spiralling patterns over the thick ice in his wake, and with them the green-eyed man took note of where Jack stood.

"Is he with you?" He asked, and Jack, confused, wished he could ask for clarification. He tried to put a foot forward, but the frost spread where he stepped and the man winced away from the decreased proximity. Then, looking down at his footfall, Jack realised he _could_ communicate.

He floated up and reached down his staff. Upon the ice he wrote, _Who?_ in the same frosty patterns he created upon his touch.

The man read the words and answered to the air, "My son. You took my son."

 _No_ , Jack answered, because he had never taken a soul. _I did not_.

The man's lips pressed together and his brow furrowed angrily. "You did. It's your fault he died."

Jack felt his stomach abandon him and he wracked his brain trying to think of when he had caused the death of a child. He came up blank, but the panic didn't abate. The very notion chilled through every part of him, from his head to his toes.

 _When?_ He asked through the medium of ice, regretting it when grief once more overcame those haunting features, but Jack had to know what he had done, and when, and to whom.

The man seemed to collapse in on himself then as he looked to his slender hands resting on his lap. "Too many years ago." He didn't move to elaborate, and Jack didn't not wish to press him for more when he already seemed too raw and too torn open for further wounding.

 _Who are you?_ He asked instead, the one question which had been haunting him for the last 250 years.

The man read the words and seemed perplexed by them.

"You do not know me?" He wondered, and Jack replied:

_Should I?_

"You are Jökul Frosti, are you not?"

Jack returned, _My name is Jack Frost_.

"Jack Frost." The man breathed sadly into the air, and whispered to himself, "My son was called Jack."

Jack heard, and came forward to put a comforting hand on the man's shoulder. He felt the cold patch upon his smart three-piece suit, but instead of shying away from it as Jack had grown used to, he placed his own hand on top of it.

As before, as every time before, it slipped through Jack's own fingers, but then it rested, merged with Jack's on his own shoulder, almost as if intertwined.

"I'm sorry." Jack said as the man looked out vacantly to the lake. Slowly, he backed away, once again leaving the mournful man behind him as he rode away on the airstream.

"My name is Loki." Loki eventually said into the empty space as the sky started to grow dark, despite knowing his son was no longer there to hear him. 

**Author's Note:**

> I went with the idea Loki knows who Jack is at the end, but before then he thought Jack's spirit was with Jökul Frosti when he realised who it was since it hadn't been with Hel, and that was why he'd reached out to it.


End file.
